u. You won't feel that we
ought to wait longer, on Emil's account, will you, Alexandra?"

Alexandra shook her head. "No, Carl; I don't feel that way about
it. And surely you needn't mind anything Lou and Oscar say now.
They are much angrier with me about Emil, now, than about you.
They say it was all my fault. That I ruined him by sending him to
college."

"No, I don't care a button for Lou or Oscar. The moment I knew
you were in trouble, the moment I thought you might need me, it all
looked different. You've always been a triumphant kind of person."
Carl hesitated, looking sidewise at her strong, full figure. "But
you do need me now, Alexandra?"

She put her hand on his arm. "I needed you terribly when it
happened, Carl. I cried for you at night. Then everything seemed
to get hard inside of me, and I thought perhaps I should never care
for you again. But when I got your telegram yesterday, then--then
it was just as it used to be. You are all I have in the world,
you know."

Carl pressed her hand in silence. They were passing the Shabatas'
empty house now, but they avoided the orchard path and took one
that led over by the pasture pond.

"Can you understand it, Carl?" Alexandra murmured. "I have had
nobody but Ivar and Signa to talk to. Do talk to me. Can you
understand it? Could you have believed that of Marie Tovesky? I
would have been cut to pieces, little by little, before I would
have betrayed her trust in me!"

Carl looked at the shining spot of water before them. "Maybe she
was cut to pieces, too, Alexandra. I am sure she tried hard; they
both did. That was why Emil went to Mexico, of course. And he was
going away again, you tell me, though he had only been home three
weeks. You remember that Sunday when I went with Emil up to
the French Church fair? I thought that day there was some kind
of feeling, something unusual, between them. I meant to talk to
you about it. But on my way back I met Lou and Oscar and got so
angry that I forgot everything else. You mustn't be hard on them,
Alexandra. Sit down here by the pond a minute. I want to tell
you something."

They sat down on the grass-tufted bank and Carl told her how he had
seen Emil and Marie out by the pond that morning, more than a year
ago, and how young and charming and full of grace they had seemed
to him. "It happens like that in the world sometimes, Alexandra,"
he added earnestly. "I've seen it before. There are women who
spread ruin around the